Art in the Reading Rooms

Portraits

Six of the seven portraits hung on the east wall of the Martin Reading Room represent members of Charles Deering’s family. The final portrait, of French composer Erik Satie, is frequently out on exhibition loan.

From left to right (south to north):

ROGER DEERING (1884-1936) by Kenyon Cox, 1889
Roger Deering was the son of Charles Deering and grandson of William Deering. A noted philanthropist, Roger Deering left over $7 million in an unrestricted gift to Northwestern University upon his death in 1936.
Kenyon Cox (1856-1919) was a painter, illustrator and writer from Warren, Ohio. He studied in Paris at l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts from 1877 until 1882 and exhibited at the Salon between 1879 and 1882. He illustrated books and magazines, wrote occasional art criticism, and taught at the Art Students League in New York from 1884 until 1909. In 1892, Cox painted four mural decorations for the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. A skilled academic draughtsman and a strong colorist, Cox was skeptical of Impressionism and an outspoken opponent of modernism.

WILLIAM DEERING (1826-1913) by Anders Zorn, 1899
William Deering was the father of Charles Deering. He founded the Deering Harvester company which in 1902 merged to become the International Harvester Company. The company's chief farm implement was a harvesting machine with an automatic binder. William Deering pioneered its development in the 1870s and 1880s. He was a generous benefactor to several institutions, notably Northwestern University, the Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, and Wesley Hospital in Chicago. The portrait was donated to Northwestern University by Charles Deering.
Swedish artist Anders Zorn (1860-1920). Zorn was a close friend of Charles Deering, to whom Zorn gave the use of his studio in Paris in 1893. Zorn was an internationally recognized painter, etcher and sculptor who maintained studios in Paris and London. His skill with portraiture in particular secured a wide range of patrons throughout the world. His first visit to the United States was in 1893, as commissioner for the Swedish art section at the Chicago World's Fair.

ROGER DEERING (1884-1936) by Wayman Adams
As noted in the description of the first painting above, Roger Deering was the son of Charles and Marion Whipple Deering. The Wayman Adams portrait, a gift of Mrs. Charles Deering, has been on permanent display in the Deering Library since 1938.
Wayman Adams(1883-1959) was born in Muncie, Indiana and studied portraiture in Italy and Spain. He is known chiefly for his portraits, which show considerable influences of John Singer Sargent, another Charles Deering associate.

MARION WHIPPLE DEERING (1857-1943) by Wayman Adams
Marion Whipple Deering was the wife of Charles Deering, for whom the Deering Library is named. The couple married in 1883 and had three children: Roger, Marion, and Barbara. This portrait of Mrs. Deering was donated to the University by her family in 1939.

CHARLES DEERING (1852-1927) by Paul Trebilcock, after Zorn
This portrait of Charles Deering, Northwestern University trustee and benefactor for whom the Deering Library was named, is a copy by Paul Trebilcock (1902-81) of an earlier portrait by the Swedish artist Anders Zorn, a close friend of Charles Deering.

JAMES DEERING (1859-1925) by Paul Trebilcock, after Zorn, 1932
James Deering joined his older brother Charles in the family business and assisted in directing the International Harvester Company after their father William's retirement in 1901. A discerning art collector, James is best known as the builder of Vizcaya, his winter estate near Miami, Florida, which since its completion in 1916 has enjoyed wide acclaim for its evocation of Italian architectural styles from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Vizcaya has housed the Dade County Art Museum since 1953.
This portrait by Trebilcock is a copy of an earlier portrait by the Swedish artist Anders Zorn, a close friend of Charles Deering. Trebilcock studied at the Art Institute of Chicago as well as in Europe. The portrait was bequeathed to Northwestern University in 1933 by Mrs. Chauncey McCormick [Marion Deering], Charles Deering's daughter and James Deering's niece.

ERIK SATIE, El Bohemio; Poet of Montmartre (1866-1925) by Ramon Casas, 1891
Erik Satie (1866-1925), the French avant-garde composer who influenced Debussy, Ravel and others, met Casas in Paris through another well-known Spanish painter, Maurice Utrillo. In Casas's portrait, Satie stands before the famous Moulin de la Galette in the bohemian Montmartre district of Paris, where Casas and Utrillo lived. Casas, a noted Catalan painter who lived in Paris in the 1890s and was admired by Picasso, specialized in portraits of intellectuals and artists, charcoal drawings, and commercial posters. Casas visited the United States twice, in 1908 and in 1924, as a guest of Charles Deering, for whom the Deering Library is named.
This portrait was acquired by Charles Deering when he studied painting in Paris in the early 1890s. It was bequeathed to Northwestern University Library by his daughter, Mrs. Chauncey McCormick, in 1956.

Window Medallions

"Grammar." The figure in purple is Priscian, the celebrated grammarian of the fifth century, A.D.

The Art Collection's window medallions were created by G. Owen Bonawit (1891-1971), a master of secular stained glass from New York City. They represent scenes and figures from literature, mythology, religion, and history. Nineteen of these are located in the Martin Reading Room; four are in the Architecture Reading Room.

History

G. Owen Bonawit (1891-1971) was a master of secular stained glass who created the painted medallions in the windows of both the Deering Library at Northwestern University and at the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale. Born in Brooklyn in 1891, Bonawit's father was an illustrator and designer in Manhattan. Bonawit apprenticed in his uncle's shop and in 1915 went into partnership with Henry Wynd Young, a traditional stained glass artist. By 1918, Bonawit had established his own firm in New York City, which produced decorative leading, stained glass, medallions, banners, mosaics, and general interior decoration. In 1941, he became a professional photographer in Arizona.

Bonawit met James Gamble Rogers (1867-1947), architect of the Deering Library and many buildings at Yale, in New York. The boom in university buildings in Neo-Gothic and Collegiate Gothic styles during the 1920s and 1930s produced an unprecedented market for secular stained glass. Bonawit's firm, which had 15 employees in 1930, created a staggering 3,301 stained glass decorations, including 673 painted medallions, for Yale's Sterling Memorial Library (1930-31). A total of 68 painted medallions were produced for the Deering Library (1931-32), 19 of which are in the Art Collection's Eloise W. Martin Reading Room.

Four of Bonawit's 19 Art Collection window medallions – two in each alcove – are painted in color. The rest are outlined or washed in dark brown paint, which was made of ground glass and a flux. Yellow and gold colors were produced by applying silver oxide or silver chloride stain to the back of the panel in varying concentrations, and by firing the glass at different temperatures. The brown paint wash used to shade figures was modeled by "stickwork," a medieval technique in which fine highlights are made by delicate scratching to remove the wash. Each medallion was fired at a temperature sufficient to melt the glass paint and to fuse it to the glass panel, but not so high that the lines would lose their definition. The panels were sent to another glass company for fitting into the leaded casement windows. Sources for Bonawit's Deering medallions include literature, history, music, philosophy, world religion, and the history of the Midwest. Library staff helped to select subjects and sent illustrations to Bonawit for translation into the designs.

Guide to the Window Medallions in the Martin Reading Room
The descriptions below, all by G. Owen Bonawit, refer to the window medallions in the Art Collection, beginning with the east medallion in the south alcove and proceeding around the room to the right. The color window medallions are numbers 2-3 (south alcove) and 17-18 (north alcove).